[image credit : Steem]
The price of the Steem token has jumped nearly 140% over the last 24-hour period as the cryptocurrency’s community is going ahead with a hard fork to launch the Hive network.
According to CryptoCompare data, the Steem token started off the year trading between the $0.10 and $0.15 marks, but ended up rising to $0.3 before enduring a correction that saw it drop back to $0.1.
Its community has now announced it’s going ahead with a hard fork meant to create the Hive network, in a bid to escape from Justin Sun’s Steemit Inc., the company behind the blockchain’s number one application Steemit. The hard fork is scheduled for March 20 at 10 am EST.
Describing the blockchain SteemPeak, a front-end application for Steem, wrote, “Hive is a DPOS [Delegated Proof of Stake] governance blockchain created by implementing a hard fork of existing Steem code. This new direction steps away from the burden of the Steemit Inc.”
Two major cryptocurrency exchanges, Binance and Huobi, have already announced support for the hard fork. On a blog post, Binance revealed it will distribute new hive tokens to steem holders at a 1:1 ratio after the hard fork, and is as such suspending deposits and withdrawals from tomorrow. Huobi made a similar announcement.
Justin Sun, CEO of the TRON Foundation, acquired Steemit last month and in a controversial move executed what many called a “hostile takeover” of the Steem blockchain using the resources the firm had, and with support from crypto exchanges Binance, Huobi, and Poloniex.
Justin Sun defended the move claiming he repelled an attack that was seeing hackers try to control the Steem blockchain. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao later on revealed the exchange was removing the vote, claiming the exchange had “no interest in chain governance.”
